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- [51 

THE CITY MIND 

A PLEA FOR A MUNICIPAL UNIVERSITY 

...By--- 

Rev. Dr. Abram Simon. 

- - - Before - - - 

"ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF THE BUCHTEL 
COLLEGE", 

AKRON, OHIO, JUNE 18, 1913. 




WASHINGTON, D. C. 



THE CITY MIND 

A PLEA FOR A MUNICIPAL UNIVERSITY. 



W e have come to take counsel concerning the Next Step Forward 
in civic and educational progress. I am to consider with you some 
reasons which not only justify such a step but also render it logically 
and civically imperative. In order to correlate the mental attitude 
of the city as a unit with the responsibilities of each individual therein. 
I shall find it convenient to present mv proposition under the title "The 
City Mind." 

The mere title suggests at once that we have entered upon an era 
of municipal psychology. It is not the psychology of a mob or of a 
mere organism. It is the psychology of a conscious and a purposeful 
organization, functioning towards an intelligent destiny. The City Mind 
is the rational and righteous response of a community to its increasing 
and progressive needs. It implies a training of its citizens to think 
and act in terms of city welfare. It expects its citizens to be "city-wise." 
It presupposes that the people have a city sense. This city-conscious- 
ness is not narrowed by geographical limits ; it is not inimical to the 
wider interests of State and Federal obligations. The city is, after 
all, the nation's grammar school for the study of patriotism. The 
city's highest task is to make citizenship ethical and dynamic. 

Our query, then, is. "xA.re we wholly satisfied with the manifesta- 
tions and activities of the City-Mind? Are we wholly satisfied with 
the civic training of out youth? Is the corporate conscience depend- 
able? Have we fully educated our people to think and to act in terms 
of city-welfare?" 

Idle flattery lulls us often into the belief that we have solved the 
problem of the city. Even a casual glance at the daily press soon 
dispels any illusion on which we may have cushioned our slumbering con- 
science. Nor will we spend any time now in analyzing this anomalous 
condition of inefticiency. Having set before ourselves a specific prob- 
lem, we shall not permit ourselves to be drawn from its main road 
by the allurements of its inviting side-paths. W'e believe that, in a 
Republic of such lavish opportunities, there is no excuse for any in- 
ferior thinking or disloyal conduct. The greater the Democracy the 
higher is the demand it makes on personal and civic righteousness. 
"Noblesse Oblige" has especial application in a Republic like ours which, 
while it levels upward, gives a new interpretation to nobility and ob- 
ligation. 

The era of cities is upon us. Within the lifetime of all of us 
America has come to enfold a thousand miniature republics in one. 
We dare not stop to consider the multiplex causes which are responsible 
for the unprecedented increase in the number and size of our cities. 
America is rushing headlong into cities, much to the disadvantage of 
the rural population. But like it or not, the tendency city-ward can- 
not be checked. The city-problem has thus grown embarrassingly 
complex. 

Every city is a cross-section, as it were, of the heart of the Ma- 
tion. Here the pulse-beats of democratic life can be counted with 



Gift 

Author 

<PVtM> 






exactness; here a diagnosis can be made, and a piognosis divined. The 
civic physician insists that a nation is sound in pi ©portion to the virihty 
of its municipahties. Because a city is the intensest unit of self-govern- 
ment, it becomes the thermometer of pohtical heahh. Here vice and 
virtue have their playgrounds. School and brothel elbow each other. 
Disease-festering alleys intersect sunstreamed avenues. Upward pull- 
ing forces are in a tug of war with downward dragging forces. Here 
the Upas tree of greed and graft spreads its hideous foliage beside the 
Liberty Tree of loyalty, courage and patriotism. Here is the man who 
lives for his country, shouldering the man who lives off his country. 
Here is the vast population of swarming youth, pouring from shop and 
store. Are they to add to the lawless, the criminal, the inefficient 
population ; or are they to be successfully trained to self-mastery and 
civic righteousness ? What vast crude material ! What conditions of 
shame ! What opportunities for constructive labor, social uplift, civic 
transformation! Evidently, then, the City-Mind is not at its best. 
Evidently, then, the City-Mind needs a school antl a schooling adequate 
to its increasing dignity ! 

What constitutes the form and activity of this civic mind? Is it 
merely its fine sweep of carpeted knolls, or ample boulevards or border- 
ing rivers? Is it merely its busy life of shop and factory, of store and 
bank, its rush of cars and stream of vehicles, its overhead wires throb- 
bing with elsctric messages of hope or fear? Is it merely its stately 
institutions of justice, its homes of mercy, its gracious parks, its public 
press, museums, libraries, towering churches, and beneficent hospitals? 
Is it merely its material evidences of civic life, of police and fire pro- 
tection, of health and food vigilance? Or is it rather the men and 
women who are behind these multiform activities, whose civic pride 
and public spirit are in constant evidence, whose unselfish devotion 
to the public weal and zeal for righteousness are making their city 
a joy to live in? Is not community living the highest of the arts 
of peace? Is it not true that a sensitive, civic conscience is the greatest 
asset of any city? 

The motive force making for such a civic appreciation is public 
education. Our Democracy has set its greatest store by the education 
of its youth. I believe that the Public School has made good, and 
I also believe that it can do better. The tremendous industrial up- 
heaval in our land is not calling for a new public school system but 
for a new view-point. Public education must open its tvindotvs upon 
Life. It must train essentially for American life and American citi- 
zenship. The nation calls upon each city to strengthen its school system 
for the ethical and patriotic cultivation of the City Mind. 

Compulsory education and The Child Labor Movement will yet 
find the entire boyhood and girlhood of the nation at school. It is 
instructive to note that of the 4,11LS45 children who entered the first 
grade of the elementary schools in 1902, only 25 per cent or 972,011 
were in the Eighth Grade in 1909. What has become of this remain- 
ing 75 per cent who dropped out in the intervening seven years? As 
we proceed in our educational system we reach the surprising fact 
that of this 25 per cent only 502,577 enrolled in the first year High 
School. This means that 12.5 per cent of the number enrolled in 
the first grade in 1902 entered the first year of the High School in 



1910. Of these High School beginners approximately 39 per cent 
will graduate in 1914. We see at once what an alarming number of 
our children does not or can not get the advanti'ges of a High School 
training! H the great majority are compelled to join the earning classes, 
every city in a Democracy ought to create additional opportunities at 
night for those who crave to seize them. If the voluntary sacrifice 
of continued education is rather due to the luiinterestingness of the 
curriculum, another serious task is thrown upon the educational au- 
thorities of a city. These hundreds of thousands thus thrown into the 
vortex of our whirling life can scarcely be expected to hold their equi- 
librium. Can these be expected to contribute much to the development 
of the Civic Mind? 

Proceeding a step further we mount the next highest rung of our 
educational ladder. How many of the High School graduates will 
enter the college, professional or normal school '' The National Bu- 
reau of Education believes that fifty per cent will avail themselves of 
College opportunities. Where will these students go for their studies, 
what will be the average cost per year to them, and what will they 
give in turn to the cities whence they come, are very vital and perti- 
nent questions. As a rule, each city of average size provides fairly 
well for the grammar and high school courses. And right here its 
educational program comes to an inglorious halt. Why does a city 
or why should a city permit such a break in its sehenie of training 
its children to an appreciation of their duties as citizens? Why should 
not the surest and broadest foundations of a liberal and technical edu- 
cation be laid, upon which the youth may build a moral and civic struc- 
ture of greatest service to himself and the State? Why should a 
municipality feel its duty complete when it turns its youth out into 
the world at the age of eighteen either to earn a livelihood at home or 
to seek higher education elsewhere? To be sure, the answer will come 
that such a continuous system of education is too expensive and that 
a University education is, after all, a personal problem. Is this not 
a narrow and an uncivic standpoint ? If there is a City-Mind will it not 
make its readiest appeal at the same time when the individual mind 
is just awaking to the largeness of life and beginning to view the 
city as the field of its operation and livelihood? 

I am not blind to the advantages which may accrue to some students 
when thrown upon their own resources away from home. I am not 
blind to the fine and inspiring traditions which hang around some 
Universities and attract the eager youth thither. Nor am I blind to 
the increasing cost of building, equipping and maintaining with becom- 
ing financial and cultural dignity an up-to-date University. Objec- 
tions one and two are not weighty enough to halt us, while objection 
three can be left cheerfully to the civic earnestness of each community 
which, when the need arises, can levy the necessary tax without ignor- 
ing the generosity and public spirit of its citizenship in such a crisis. 
The Universities will go henceforth where the people and the pupils 
are to be found. The people and the pupils are now in the cities. 

Herein lies our weakness. Hundreds of students are compelled to 
seek their College training away from home. They leave their cities 
at their most impressionable age of budding civic consciousness. The 
city loses touch with the students whom it has fostered ten or twelve 



years. Absence from it for the next four College years dulls the 
edge of city-appreciation. While the city is recalled for some^ senti- 
mental reason, its civic possibility and duty do not loom large in the 
imagination and aiTection of the student. Absence does not make the 
civic heart grow fonder. The problems of his city do not constitute his 
probhms. These students have lost in civic pride. From the years of 
eighteen to twenty-two the civic appetite has not been whetted. 

What would have been gained had opportunities for higher education 
been opened up in their home town? Let us not sneer at the financial 
advantages. With the increasing cost of living, the expense of Uni- 
versity education is growing at an equally rapid pace. It is fair to 
^ay that the cost of a University training away from home is practically 
twice as great as it would have been at home. Besides, the money 
spent at home for sucl an education would remain in the local coffers. 
It is fair to say that tho cost for one year, including tuition, other fees, 
room and board and a few moderate pleasures would run from $500 
to $1,000 at any first-class College. The figures of the Cincinnati Uni- 
versity, however, reveal a constantly diminishing cost per student as 
the number of students increases. The annual cost to the municipality 
of Cincinnati for one student was in 19]! about $103. This school, then, 
of almost two thousand students has saved several hundred thousand 
dollars in the course of four years' training. The Cincinnatian. paying 
no tuition fee, living at home and spared many of the additional in- . 
ducements and temptations, finds that his personal expenses for nine 
school months in a year have been practically cut in half. 

If it be alleged' that the cost elsewhere is materially lessened by 
the opportunities of self-help afforded students in the great Universities, 
it but presents additional argimient to the increasing advantages of self- 
help which your own city-university may offer you. Here, again, the 
Cincinnati University's testimony is eloquent. Through its magnificent 
scheme of co-operation with the municipality's activities, channels of 
self support become part of their educational endeavors. But aside from 
this, 59 per cent of all the students work during the year, v/hile (57 
per cent of the male students work during the vacation. Recent figures 
indicate that the percentage of students who have followed gainful 
occupations before coming to the college is 85.5. The outstanding fact 
is that 74 per cent of all the male students are working regularly dur- 
ing the year for part of their time, including the co-operative students, 
whose work is a part of their course. 

This question of self-help opens up the latest issues of vocational 
training. Shining shoes, barbering. waiting on the table and similar 
kinds of unskilled labor by which students work their way through 
college are not calculated to reveal to them the wider avenues of voca- 
tional service. Again, vocational training does not belong to pupils 
of the elementary grades. Even boys and girls in the high schools 
scarcely know what line of activity will be congenial to tliem. But 
a University in a city is peculiarly and favorably conditioned to enter 
into such relationship with the activities of a city as to invite careers 
of usefulness to earnest students. In as much as you have enjoyed 
the presence and advice of Dr. Charles William Dabney you have 
learnt from him of the numerous points of contact between the five 
Colleges composing the Cincinnati University and the various branches 



of the municipality's quickening life. Dr. Dabney has made the "co- 
operation method"' so practical that it has been adopted by other Uni- 
versities. A^ocational I'raining is the natural outgrowth of this co- 
operative scheme. Each of the five colleges holds intimate relation 
with the Board of Health and its problems of meat, milk, water, sani- 
tation and 'quarantine, with street, park and alley improvements, with 
school teachers and children, with slum, poverty, crime and social set- 
tlements, with factory and shop. Theoretical teaching goes hand in 
hand with practical training. A student is earning and learning at the 
same time. But what is infinitely more, he is learning to know his 
city, its dark and its bright spots, its ])olitical graft and glory, its daily 
activities and its hourly needs. It is this close familiarity with his city 
during his College days which develops civic pride and civic honor. 
Thus, while the city serves the University, the University serves the 
City. The home-trained University student finds his city growing up 
under his own eyes. He is best prepared to give it loyal service. 

Our statements have not taken into consideration the thousands 
of earnest young men and young women who cannot afford to leave 
home for advanced courses. Has the city no duty to them? Shall not 
Democracy stand for equality of opportunity? Siiall the desire to drink 
from the founts of liberal culture be stifled or denied them because 
the support of their parents or of themselves is their paramount obli- 
gation? Granted that these students desire only two years of advanced 
studies, ought not day or night courses be open to them? Here, again, 
the example of the Cincinnati University becomes classical. Seventy- 
seven per cent of its student body comes from parents who were denied 
higher education. Or, looking at it from another point of view, "The 
University is holding the door of opportunity open to at least 1,100 stu- 
dents who would not be able to get a higher education if it did not 
exist. All the facts go to show that Cincinnati students come from 
the modest homes of people of limited means, representing the thrift 
and substance of the city's "population." If we would have the City- 
Mind properly activized, poverty should never become an excuse or a 
cause for its weakness or failure. 

Let me direct your attention to another consideration. Not only 
are the favored Universities more costly, but they are overcrowded 
and are becoming unwieldy. Of necessity a selective process is pur- 
sued under an increasingly more rigid entrance examination which makes 
admission to them the more difficult. I am not advocating a lowering 
of standards, but I am trying to indicate how a Municipal University 
may co-ordinate its High School courses with University demands so 
as to make the educational chain continuous, and how it may give cul- 
tural privileges to those who are not striving for academic degrees. 

The complexity of our municipal life is a challenge to specialism. 
The city is calling for experts. There is scarcely a phase of municipal 
administration, finance, food, hygiene, education, philanthropy, health, 
building, streets, which does not invite the expert. Whence do these 
men come? They are, doubtless, University graduates who have been 
invited there by big industries or city authorities. Why should the city 
not train its own servants as its experts? A City University in closest 
touch with civic administration becomes a Bureau of Municipal Re- 
search. Each department of the City University will become a labora- 
tory for the city. 

6 



The University must become a dynamo of moral energy. The na- 
tion is witnessing a remarkable ethical awakening. On all sides we 
hear the call for righteous leadership. We never before were so keen 
on idealism, vision, conscienceful politics as we are today. We never 
before were so ashamed of the brazen corruption m municipalities. The 
rising educational standards go hand in hand with the demand for the 
moralization of the ballot, of capital, of labor, of civic office. Has 
the University no credit for this splendid moral re-inforcement ? Have 
the people not been stirred by the leadership which caught the flame of 
enthusiasm and idealism from the altars of Alma Maters? H the 
recent ideals of civic leadership as incarnated in Theodore Roosevelt, 
William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson bring glory to Harvard, Yale 
and Princeton, is not a rainbow of brilliant promise and responsibility 
thrown upon all the institutions of higher learning? Who can esti- 
mate the myriad rays of moral stimulus and civic enthusiasm which, 
having emanated from them, are slowly breaking through the walls 
of compact institutionalism and percolating down to the humblest inhabi- 
tant of our land? 

There is no clash between the University-Mind and the City-Mind ! 
The University-Mind is essentially one of inquiry, of freedom, of search 
for the truth and of devotion to it. No longer glorying in its classic 
aloofness or undemocratic isolation, the University stands today as the 
citadel of learning for the sake of the largest and fullest life. It holds 
the triumphs of the intellect, the visions of the seers, the glories of 
the humanities, the excellencies of the spirit ni trust for the people. 
Its ideal is consecrated service. The University is morally committed 
to practical idealism. Is not the City-Mind more than a gloating over 
its materialism of street and store, of architecture and administration? 
Is it not more than a clash of men and ideas? Is it not the attitude 
of loyal service to the citizens thereof, and of consecrated duty of the 
citizens to the city they inhabit? Do not the ideals of both city and 
University supplement and complement each other? 

See, then, what it will mean to a city to be blessed with the moral 
reservoir of its own University ? 

A City University will develop its own cultural type. It will train 
its own preachers of righteousness, haters of fraud, defenders of the 
poor, blazers of new paths in municipal activity. A municipal Univer- 
sity will be the city's greatest asset. What a nev; charm it will add to 
the attractions of a community? What new streams of culture will 
flow into municipal channels? A city begets a new distinction when it 
flowers into a University. It will seem like some towering pyramid 
of inspiration built upon the solid and expansive mass of the common 
people. Around it children will crowd with their ambitions to climb 
to the top. CXit of it will come the poorer no less than the wealthier 
to enter again the arena of life. Out of it will come the trained engi- 
neer, teacher, lawyer, physician, social worker, all lovers of, and workers 
for, their city. It will stand as a watch-tower in times of distress. Its 
influence will soften the harshness of commercialism. Its attractions 
will draw to it men and women of light and leading. Your factories 
will do better work, your industries will be examples of efficiency. The 
University Spirit will lave the community as with a baptism of hal- 
lowed service. The City-Mind will grow up to the University. The 



University-Mind will go out to the city. Am I wron^, 022 164 978 
vocacy of a Municipal University as the most logical and progressive 
step in the education of the future, the education of, and in, a city for 
the benefit of the nation? 

I do not know your city or your problems, but I suspect that they 
are not unlike conditions generally prevalent in our country. I do 
not know the number of pupils who annually leave Akron for other 
centers of learning or the hundreds who remain home because there 
are no local opportunities for higher education open to them. Three 
things, however, I do know. You have here the great Buchtel College 
of whose splendid traditions you are proud, and whose future becomes 
a matter of loving concern. It is finely endowed, and properly equipped. 
It is presided over by a man of large scholarship and sweep of cultural 
experience. It has a faculty of enthusia.stic and scholarly professors. 
It has five hundred men and women who are happy to acknowledge 
it as their Alma Mater. And you stand now at the cross-roads! 

The second fact I know is that your halting between two opinions 
is your hesitancy to move forward from Buchtel College to the City 
of Akron University. \ou are proud of its tradition. You may not 
desire a change of name. You may feel a pang at the loss of identity. 
But growth means outgrowth. You must and you will advance not 
because you love Buchtel less, but because you will love the Akron 
University more. Every maiden betrothed to her beloved is proud 
of the memories that cling to her old home; fondly cherishes the 
family name which blessed her at birth. Yet marriage brings her the 
name of her husband. Does the assumption of the new name mean 
a betrayal of the old? If what I have said tonight about the spirit and 
advantages of a Municipal University in the light of conditions as 
I find them in the cities of America has any weight, you will give me 
the right as your guest to repeat the words of Elijah, "How long halt 
ye between two opinions?" 

The third fact is that Akron is entering upon an era of industrial 
prosperity, whose influence upon the civic and educational life of this 
city can scarcely be estimated now at its true value. You are becoming 
or, doubtless, now are the Rubber Tire Center of this country. There 
are twenty-two rubber-tire industries here, worth $200,000,000. These 
industries have brought a new population hither. These industries are 
born of and are fed by the brains of experts. These industries are in 
their infancy. Who can tell what new discoveries in the chemistry 
of rubber await the eager student? By this industry alone you are 
able to Akronise the country. A University strong in its scientific 
departments has here a world-gripping opportunity. In your own boys 
you may be able to greet the masters of the situation. So, each fonu 
of industrial, economic, social and political life in your city can offer 
opportunities to engage the energy and capacity of your growing youth. 

Let me, then, exhort you, to halt no longer, but to march forward 
to your great goal. You have the College and its endowment ; you have 
the spirit; you have the chance of a lifetime. I trust that the Akron 
University may become a living and an inspiring reality, a thing of civic 
beauty, and an educational joy forever. 



